I don't believe what I just saw.

[hamondale]

This story of the Austin is of the "present era," i.e., after the '99 – '00  installation of the V6 and related drive train.
     One summer night circa 2004, my wife and I were planning to take an evening cruise.  But in the late afternoon, I had the Austin up on jack stands in the front, with the front passenger wheel off.  Back then I still had the old 13 inch Cosmic mags on it with185-70 Michelin tires.  I was checking something, I don't remember what, brakes or a wheel bearing, whatever.
      I'd recently bought a Dewalt power screw driver and had the socket drive adapter so I could use it as a speed wrench to remove and replace the lug nuts.  I'd spin the four lug nuts on fast, each one stopping with the brrrrrp when it seated on the wheel.  But at that point, they weren't all that tight.   Nowhere near 70 ft-lb or whatever the spec was, so they needed to be finished with the torque wrench.
     Just as I had zipped the last lug nut on, my wife came into the garage and asked me to come in and help her with something.  So I did and it took a little while.  You can probably see where this is going.
    When I got back out in the garage, I finished several other small tasks, and took the car down off the jack stands.  And off we went.
    After about 6 miles, I started thinking I was feeling a little vibration.  You know your car so you know that feeling.  At first, you're wondering if it's really there, or if the pavement is rough or something.  But after another mile, I thought, no, something is going on.  We were coming into a village, with a pretty well developed strip mall area on the edge of town.   I said to my wife, "I feel something in the front end.  I'm going to pull in to the plaza up here and stop and check it.
    That would make it about 8 miles total.  That last hundred yards to the plaza driveway, it was getting noticeably worse, especially as I slowed down.  Then I went to make the turn into the driveway and felt a tremendous shucking and shaking in the front end and realized I have to stop RIGHT NOW.  I did, with the back corner of the Austin barely off the state highway.
    I got out and walked around to the passenger side, and found the front wheel cocked at a big angle, top in and bottom out.   And with all four lug nuts gone.
    You read that right.  But I'll say it again.  All four lug nuts were gone.  But the wheel was still engaged with one or two studs on the rotor.  Had I gone a couple feet more, it would have come off completely.  That probably would have damaged the wheel well of my somewhat ill-fitting fiberglass hood, and crushed the passenger side header collector, and probably done other bad stuff.
   I figured, well, at least a couple of the lug nuts can't be too far away, so I walked back up the shoulder looking for them.  But they must have bounced into the weeds and were nowhere to be found.
    Right at that location was a Monro Muffler shop.  I went in and borrowed a roller jack and a breaker bar, and I took one lug nut off each of the other three wheels, put the almost escaped front wheel back on with three, and we drove back home.  The next day I bought replacement studs and lug nuts and put everything back to spec.  No harm done.  And incredible luck.  That could have gone very badly for us and others on the road.
    And a lesson learned.  Now when I work on the Austin, if I so much as open the hood (rear hinges/front end up), I put a neon blaze orange piece of tape on the horn button of the steering wheel.  Another piece goes on the broad chrome band of the grille in plain sight.  And whatever I'm working on gets a piece of tape in the vicinity.
    Before the vicinity piece gets removed, the work is inspected and the vicinity checked for loose parts, fasteners, tools, etc.  Then when the hood is closed, the hood piece doesn't get removed until the hood is latched AND the two back up Destaco retaining clamps are locked down and checked.  Then I look under the car for anything loose or out of place.  Only then does the steering wheel piece of tape get removed, and the Austin is cleared to drive.  Absent that protocol, it's too easy for me to make a mistake like that again.  And I know I won't get that lucky twice.
     I still think back on seeing that wheel there with no lug nuts holding it on.  I wouldn't have thought it was possible if I didn't see it myself.  And it calls to mind Jack Buck's call of Kirk Gibson's home run in game 1 of the '88 World Series, which fits here as well: "I don't believe what I just saw."

[MGBV8]

I learned from Max Fulton, when working on our TR6 race car a great rule that, as crew chief on their MGB vintage race car, he has everyone adhere to.  Never put a nut or bolt on without doing final torquing right then & there.  If you cannot do that, do not reassemble.

[BlownMGB-V8]

Wheels falling off can be scary, or can be funny. Or both but usually not at the same time. Oddly enough this reminded me of another story.

Back in the day, I'm thinking it was the late 70's, Dan had a pretty new Dodge Magnum and I had driven a '62 or '63 Plymouth Belvedere 4 door back from out west. That car was a whole series of stories in and of itself that basically ended with a showdown, it or me. Not hard to see who won. Did the similarity to "Christine" have anything to do with it? Hard to say, cars were a bit "different" back then and this particular incident was just one in a series that tended towards the potentially deadly kind yet thankfully never quite got there.

The Belvedere, let's just call her Bev for short was an evil tempered witch sort of like my first wife who inhabited the same rough time frame, not to speak ill of the dead or Dave's mom you understand, but she was a bit too fond of underhanded tactics which ultimately I just couldn't abide. On this particular day I was out with friends just cutting up and generally having a good time. I'm a little fuzzy on who was riding with who but I was in the lead with Dan following pretty close behind, Tom and Smooth were along as CB operators and we were bombing down a dirt back road in WV which connected Rt 60 to Ball's Gap Rd, something with a picturesque name like Wolf Creek. Now by then we were old hands at drifting the dirt and gravel roads of our youth, there was nobody else out, and we were just letting it all hang out, slinging those big old monsters through the turns trying to build up the berm on the outside by moving as much dirt that way as possible, sideways to the point of no return and sometimes beyond and really how else are you ever going to find your limits, right? The road was just a smidge of gravel on a base of red clay and dry as Grandma's... yard hung laundry? Yeah that's it, watch your minds. Good traction for dirt in other words and we were moving right along. Up until it wasn't.

Came a few sprinkles on the windshield and now some of you know what that does to clay. In short order that fine line we were riding got a lot wider and we had some exciting times preventing the whole spin-n-stop routine but like good teenagers everywhere which I gotta tell you we were most definitely feeling our inner 14 year old, we whooped it up and asked for more!

More was what we got. With a little bit of a lead I came around the hill on a left hander, nicely banked so it really looked good and started to slide as soon as I cut the wheel. This was nothing unusual as we'd been sliding all morning but Bev refused to help in any way and we proceeded right on off the edge into the tall weeds and light brush, making it a straight run at the last instant in hopes of avoiding trees on the drop which we pretty successfully did, disregarding saplings and such of up to say 3 inches or so which wouldn't faze that old tank. As I recall, Tom was on the air shouting out warnings and Dan, having a better behaved car and probably better tires was able to stop with only two tires over the edge instead of all four. We all proceeded to get out and assemble back up on the road, and then laugh our asses off.

After an hour or two of that tomfoolery we decided to get the car back so we all jumped in Dan's car and took a short drive over to Dad's barn where I jumped on the farm tractor and we headed back over. As near as I can recall we spent considerable time and hilarity digging up the road with the tractor in this way then that before we finally got it back up, whereupon we found the gate to the farmer's field below and learned that if I'd only stayed off the brakes I could have just driven it down into the field below and back out on the road. Or maybe we found the gate after we gave up in going up and decided to go down. That actually seems a lot more likely. In any event we returned the tractor and continued on with our day, immensely amused with ourselves and having a wonderful time telling anyone who would hold still for the tale. Except Mom and Dad of course, you never wanted to do that.

Jim

[hamondale]

That's a well-told tale, and I can relate.  Like you, we did dirt drifting in field cars pre-license age, and then on public back roads once licensed.  Before it was a thing with fart can Hondas and such.
   This is now gotten off topic wrt Brit cars but seems like the main criterion is the story just needs a vehicle in a starring role.  So I'll chip in another.
   First some background info.  I grew up on a dairy farm, which also raised some cash crops, wheat included.  After harvesting wheat, straw is baled up for livestock bedding.  Balers (at least back then) often had tying problems, sometimes leading to a series of broken bales.  This particular harvest and straw baling,  there was a problem with the baler, and a half dozen bales were mis-tied and broke when they were spat out of the baler kicker.  It wasn't worth the bother to rebale them.  
    After I finished the baling of the last wagon load, I hooked up the disc behind our 7-ton Ford 8600, to disc up the whole field of wheat stubble.  I started on the perimeter, doing laps around the field, working in toward the center.  Meanwhile my uncle hauled the wagon  loads out of the field with another tractor. He came back and set the aborted bales on fire, since they wouldn't disc up and disperse in the soil.  In the area where the half dozen bales were together, he kicked them into a big pile and set them on fire.  
    About a half hour later, I came to that spot with the disc.  The pile of ash looked pretty spent only wafting up a little smoke.  It wasn't.  Under the ash was a lot of very light weight burning embers.  Consider now that a big diesel tractor running at wide open throttle moves a SHITLOAD of air through its radiator to keep cool.  The air is ducted downward.  (That's why tractors often kick up so much dust.)  When all of that blowdown air hit that pile of embers, it kicked up what was unburned, and a big fireball started up towards me.  I baled off the deck of the Ford, hit the ground, and rolled to be sure to get out of the way of the disc.  So now the Ford and disc are charging through the field, unmanned, in 6th gear, wide open, running about 12mph, with a few hundred yards to go before they would crash into a creek bed.  Boy I thought, are they (Dad and uncle) going to be pissed at me.  The only thing missing was background music - Jethro Tull's  "Locomotive Breath" would have been appropriate.  
    So I had to figure out how to shut this thing down.  One choice was to climb onto the disc from behind and then along the disc, and up onto the Ford.  Too slow. The other was to get the throttle off and make it stall.  Worth a try - I knew that the foot throttle pedal and hand throttle on the Ford were linked. If I could get in and push up under the foot pedal, it would throttle the Ford back and it would stall.  To do so, I had to run alongside, slip in just in front of the rear wheel, flick my hand, and hit the pedal up.  It worked.  If I had stumbled and fallen during the attempt, I would have been run over by the rear wheel of a seven ton tractor, and then run over by a disc.  At that point, it would have been most effective to just plow me under and mark the site. Like you,  I never told Dad or Mom about that one.

[BlownMGB-V8]

Ouch! Now that's a scary tale. It's a good thing we were immortal at that age is all I can think of to say. I do not think you would have survived a snagged sneaker.

Farms are dangerous places and always have been. Much more dangerous than anyone realizes who hasn't been there. Many many opportunities for all sorts of mayhem with dire consequences. But we needn't devolve into stories of gore, even with Halloween only just passed. I have one for you of pure high adventure that I found quite thrilling at the time, and there was undoubtedly the potential for any amount of unknown disaster, yet it never occurred. I think the common theme here is the inclusion of a motor vehicle of some sort or description, yet even without one I believe these stories are welcome.

So, one fine spring weekend it was decided that today would be a good day to clear out some brush and such from around the boundaries. You know how that stuff builds up, and it's a constant battle to keep things in good repair. Unlike the UK we have little reliance on hedges, using mainly barbed wire and natural features and of course around the bottom was the local creek. My brothers and I had made much use of said creek wherein lie many more tales of misadventure but on this particular day we were dealing with the aftermath of storms and flooding which had laid a number of trees out into the field. Now you can't just plow around said trees and ignore them. Not only does it mess up your rows but it gives your field an irregular boundary and takes away probably at least 3 times the amount of tillable soil that the tree occupies. And if left to their own devices the agents of Mother Nature will continue to extend inward until they meet in the middle. So they have to go, and go with fair promptness.

In this situation the farm tractor is your best friend, followed closely by a good chainsaw and a stout chain, supplemented by a few strapping young lads. Said lads being of teenage disposition, we were all for it, and a day of sawing, dragging and tossing ensued, throwing Mother Nature right back at herself at the edges of the field, leaving at day's end one fairly large butt log which we were having a spot of trouble budging. The sensible thing at that point might have been to call it a day and head to dinner, leaving a bit of sawing and dragging for another day but Pops, being a man of strong determination wasn't easily deterred and with a trench dug across under said log and a chain thrown over the top we were hitched up and ready to give it a go.

To keep things in perspective let me first describe the source of our motive energies. This was a fairly new Massey Ferguson 235 Orchard tractor, a decent mid size tractor for small farms, with a stated 35 drawbar horsepower and 42 PTO horsepower with the specs claiming 46.7 hp from a 3 cylinder Perkins diesel engine, so not all that big but much more than a toy, a lawn or estate tractor. The orchard version used the rear half of the significantly larger 435 series tractor in conjunction with some short but enormously wide tires which soon came into play.  Those familiar with farm equipment will recognize this as a pretty desirable piece and MF fairly peppered the landscape with them though by far the vast majority were of the row crop configuration. The orchard was scarce enough that the only online photos I could find were of an old and very used tractor that was up for sale:



Notice the very beefy axle housing given the size of the tractor.



And of course the very much oversized rear tires, bearing in mind of course that the lugs are completely worn off in this example whereas ours was only a year or two old at the time with like-new tires.



So with the ground at that state of moisture that allowed the lugs to dig in fully and yet hold firm, and with the chain attached to an extension called a "pig pole" or boom pole so that we could get the maximum dig from the tires by adjusting the height of the effective draw bar, first Dad and then Andy tried their best to move the monster log with only a little success but managing to dig up the ground a fair amount in the process.
 
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.shgcdn.com%2F4ce85210-781e-4c0a-8848-a94523000ad9%2F-%2Fformat%2Fauto%2F-%2Fpreview%2F3000x3000%2F-%2Fquality%2Flighter%2F&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=c6abd75c7f24d3da4c24931ecffdfc124ad86b4befc0a071bf7909963d8e2b8e

But I had noticed something. You see I was by then very familiar with the tractor and what it was capable of, and I just knew that with the right combination that beast could get that log dislodged. It was a matter of finding that fine balance between keeping the revs up high enough to get maximum power and getting enough traction to keep the tires from simply throwing dirt into the air. They had already found the right gear and I felt that if the angle of the chain was just right it would force the rear tire down enough to get the right amount of bite. So taking the bull by the horns I got Andy off the seat, no mean feat in and of itself you know, climbed aboard, and set my controls for max everything. A little fine adjustment to the height of the boom and I had that chain lined out to let the Massey put everything it had into the ground at full snort and roar. Max throttle and with just the right amount of slack the clutch banged in and LAUNCHED that tractor. That's when all hell broke loose and with dirt flying high and the Massey up on it's hind legs and BOUNCING on those big balloon orchard tires that old log inched forwards. The Massey continued to bounce with me in the seat on top like a Rodeo rider on a bull and every time it came down it dug a little harder and the log moved a little more and so it was that I continued to ride that ungainly contraption around in a circle and over to the tree line, where we finally unhooked and rolled the log into the trees. And I've got to tell you all it was quite a sight, looking around the sides of that tractor hood which was way up in the air, all of us going up and down at a prodigious rate and doing everything in my power to keep it going while holding on for dear life. All in all one of my fondest memories of the farm and I thank you heartily for bringing it to mind.

Jim

[hamondale]

Sounds like you also got the chain hooked just low enough so the tractor didn't flip over backwards.  That was quite a balancing act with probably a pretty small margin of error to work with.  
I often think of how many of our experiences would go viral if instant video were around back then.

[BlownMGB-V8]

That was the beauty of having the chain hooked to the pig pole, the tractor couldn't flip over so it was kind like having wheelie bars. That's not to say things couldn't have gone sideways in the worst possible manner and it sorta makes me wonder about a generation that could stand idly by and watch their kids do something like that. But, I expect I caught the old man by surprise. Wouldn't have been the first time. Something about growing up on the farm seems to have given me a bit of a reckless nature. Or maybe it's just me, I dunno. In any event by the time I got to British cars that characteristic was fairly well developed.

Jim

[Dan B]

In response to the post about Bev, that ole girl tried to kill you, or maybe saved your ass many times!  It was Smooth on the CB. I'll never forget his screams coming through my speakers..."oh noooo!!  We're going over a cliff!!!"
If not for that, which caused me to slow down, I surely would have landed on top of y'all!!

[hamondale]

I still think back on seeing that wheel there with no lug nuts holding it on.  I wouldn't have thought it was possible if I didn't see it myself.  And it calls to mind Jack Buck's call of Kirk Gibson's home run in game 1 of the '88 World Series, which fits here as well: "I don't believe what I just saw."

   There is now an epilogue to this story.  It doesn't involve a brit car, but does involve a daily driver.
   We live in upstate NY.  A few days ago, we got a minor storm with an inch of snow, covered over by a half inch of freezing rain.  Not all that unusual in December.  We live on a fairly steep hillside.  The blacktop driveway is 250 feet long.  The first 150 are at a steep 25 - 30% grade, and then it levels off over the last 100 feet to maybe just a few percent at the garage door.  Almost level, or at least we think of it that way.
    The snow and ice froze to the driveway.  It wasn't solid, more like a crust.  Neither the snowblower or hand shovel would touch it.  At the point where it starts to break steep, I chiseled out a foot wide tire track down to the pavement.  With our AWD vehicles, we put them in off-road mode and they walked up and down it easily.  So we could get in and out.
   Yesterday afternoon, I got back from a grocery trip, turned our 2021 Subaru Outback around at the top, and backed up tight to the garage door to unload.  Closed the garage door and thought nothing more of it.  In the evening and during the night, it rained steadily at around 40 degrees.  Apparently the crust on the driveway, upon which the Subaru was parked, transformed into solid ice beneath its tires.
   When I went to leave at 7:30am today, up went the garage door, and the Subaru was gone.  This is the second incidence shared on this forum here of, "Dude, Where's My Car?"  (See my "How It Should Not Have Been Done" for the first.)  WTF.  Did it get stolen?  I walked out of the garage and shortly saw it parked 20 feet into our woods.  It had skidded 100 feet straight down the driveway, and upon reaching a slight turn in the driveway, it continued on straight.  Where it hit a sturdy stump and a couple of trees.  It's now at a collision shop and my insurance company has been duly notified.  Making a WAG, I figure at least $10K in damages.  I'll follow up when they provide a formal estimate.
   Looking at the slope where it was parked, never in a million years would I have thought that crust could be turned into ice, and the static coefficient of friction between ice and tires be reduced to where gravity won, and it went sledding down the driveway, almost at free rolling speed.  And once again, "I don't believe what I just saw."
   

[Scott Costanzo]

I still think back on seeing that wheel there with no lug nuts holding it on.  I wouldn't have thought it was possible if I didn't see it myself.  And it calls to mind Jack Buck's call of Kirk Gibson's home run in game 1 of the '88 World Series, which fits here as well: "I don't believe what I just saw."

  There is now an epilogue to this story.  It doesn't involve a brit car, but does involve a daily driver.
  We live in upstate NY.  A few days ago, we got a minor storm with an inch of snow, covered over by a half inch of freezing rain.  Not all that unusual in December.  We live on a fairly steep hillside.  The blacktop driveway is 250 feet long.  The first 150 are at a steep 25 - 30% grade, and then it levels off over the last 100 feet to maybe just a few percent at the garage door.  Almost level, or at least we think of it that way.
    The snow and ice froze to the driveway.  It wasn't solid, more like a crust.  Neither the snowblower or hand shovel would touch it.  At the point where it starts to break steep, I chiseled out a foot wide tire track down to the pavement.  With our AWD vehicles, we put them in off-road mode and they walked up and down it easily.  So we could get in and out.
  Yesterday afternoon, I got back from a grocery trip, turned our 2021 Subaru Outback around at the top, and backed up tight to the garage door to unload.  Closed the garage door and thought nothing more of it.  In the evening and during the night, it rained steadily at around 40 degrees.  Apparently the crust on the driveway, upon which the Subaru was parked, transformed into solid ice beneath its tires.
  When I went to leave at 7:30am today, up went the garage door, and the Subaru was gone.  This is the second incidence shared on this forum here of, "Dude, Where's My Car?"  (See my "How It Should Not Have Been Done" for the first.)  WTF.  Did it get stolen?  I walked out of the garage and shortly saw it parked 20 feet into our woods.  It had skidded 100 feet straight down the driveway, and upon reaching a slight turn in the driveway, it continued on straight.  Where it hit a sturdy stump and a couple of trees.  It's now at a collision shop and my insurance company has been duly notified.  Making a WAG, I figure at least $10K in damages.  I'll follow up when they provide a formal estimate.
  Looking at the slope where it was parked, never in a million years would I have thought that crust could be turned into ice, and the static coefficient of friction between ice and tires be reduced to where gravity won, and it went sledding down the driveway, almost at free rolling speed.  And once again, "I don't believe what I just saw."
 

That is some bad luck! WTF? 

Sorry to hear that, John!

Scott

[hamondale]

Thanks, Scott.  No worries.  It was just a daily driver car.  Not the Austin, not our pristine 17K mile 88 Cougar XR7, and not our zombie apocalypse bus.

[Dan B]

Jim doesn't want to tell the story about how the wire wheels kept falling off of his OPS. Once when I was on the auto cross course!
At BritishV8 2017, when we arrived at Cass Scenic Railroad after a spirited drive on the mountain roads, someone noticed I was missing a lug nut on my newly converted 1uz TR7. I failed to realize I had needed to re-torque the new aluminum wheels. Luckily, Kelly was carrying a torque wrench in his trunk.

[BlownMGB-V8]

Nobody really enjoys telling of their mistakes. But I feel it's necessary to at least occasionally do so as it's an exercise in humility that often is personally beneficial. In this case it was simply a matter of ignorance which is at least sometimes excusable in some degree. My mistake then was in not expending the effort to find out for certain which direction the big winged nuts should turn to tighten. Instead my reasoning was backwards and I got it wrong. Overconfidence in my own abilities I suppose you could say.

So, a cautionary tale for those who would convert to wire wheels.

Now doing so in the first place is of questionable merit, especially with old stock wheels. They are leaky, wobbly, noisy and heavy, usually expensive and often hard to remove but we do like the way they look. If you were ignorant of their relative virtues you can be excused in thinking they are better in some ways when actually they are not.

Regardless, I found a set of front hubs and rear axle shafts and made the change over, whereupon I proceeded to beat the crap out of the nuts, probably with a hand sledge and a block of wood in an attempt to get them to stop going "Clunk" every time I hit the gas or the brakes. Pretty unsuccessfully I might add.

Then came the local autocross and Dan and I both registered to drive my first MGB, a 1971 which we soon named the OPS or Orange Piece of S*** which it rather truly was. That is an entirely different story which I won't bore you with at present but we could revisit if there is any interest.

This day the autocross was in the very scenic Daniel Boone National Park on the outskirts of Charleston, WV nicely sited amidst trees and a babbling brook with a nice lot for the pit area. I had a fresh engine in the car with a strong tune and our hopes were high as first I and then Dan made our first runs where we felt we had reasonable hopes of bringing home a 1-2 finish against a pretty competitive field. I was standing with one of the corner workers as Dan made his run and mid way as he came sliding out of the left hander past us into the back straight with the engine roaring we saw the spinner from the right rear tire deposited neatly at our feet. Holy Moley! We both started running and waving our hands but to no avail as the tire took off past him, completed the straight, jumped the curb and dived into the creek! Fortunately Dan noticed something was up and stopped the car before much metal was ground off the brake drum and we recovered the wheel and put it back on but that was it for us on that day. They wouldn't let us back on the course after that one. In fact IIRC they sorta unreasonably insisted that they all had to double check for correct rotation before they would even consider letting us even register for the next one. The very nerve of those guys!

So there's your story. Overall it was a most excellent day with high drama, considerable excitement, copious entertainment and a fun story to tell. And that's the best thing I can say about the old OPS in fact, that car gave me quite a lot of good stories. Not always fun at the time, but certainly entertaining in the aftermath.

Jim

[hamondale]

Just got the Subaru back.  Final bill was $8154.  So my WAG of 10K was not far off.  I won't be parking it on the driveway slope when there's crusty snow again.

[BlownMGB-V8]

This next story is more of a "I can't believe I went to all that trouble" sort of thing but it's also how I started out with MGBs.

Let's hark back to my first exposure to anything British motorized, when I was 15 or maybe 16 and my older brother's friend Johnny had a Triumph Bonneville and one day around dusk he told me I could ride it, up and down the driveway and around the yard and the house and since we lived on a farm that was almost enough room to get it into 2nd gear. I was just about to get comfortable with it when the dew fell and yep, going around one of those corners the rear tire slid out and I found myself being slung around in a circle while I held onto the handlebars and not exactly having much of an idea how to get away. As you can imagine, Andy and Johnny stood there and simply howled, they were no help at all! Eventually I figured out that my death grip on the right handlebar grip was what the problem was and so I rather sheepishly gave it back to Johnny with an apology for dropping it in the grass. He was way too amused to care. For a first time on a motorcycle it could have been worse.

The years passed, and I traveled, as young men often are wont to do and along the way I had reason to know a fellow who owned a Spitfire, and coming back from Christmas he had quite the tale. It seemed he hadn't been getting enough sleep and had a long drive back and along the way he found himself awakened from an unintentional doze in a most strange situation. Now I can see how that might happen having suffered a near thing in a similar way but this beat all. Looking up he had a roof overhead. Forward to both sides he had tires as big as his car and more behind him. How it happened will always remain one of those mysteries but somehow he'd dozed off and drifted over underneath the trailer of a semi going down the freeway at 70 mph! You can bet he was convinced he had angels watching over him that day as he eased out to the side. Lord only knows what the semi driver thought. I'd had no idea a Spitfire would even fit under there.

Later I had my own Bonneville for awhile and not the last one either, along with a Norton Atlas and while vacationing on Guam with my wealthy uncle for 18 months I made acquaintance with a co-worker who owned a GT6. This madman was a hunter from the wilds of Utah and wanted to put a Holley 2bbl on the engine. I pointed out to him that it would mean a hole in the hood but he was undaunted and so we proceeded to the hobby center where we looked for scrap materials to make it happen. Being Guam of course there was nothing ready made to do the job but what we found in the scrap pile was a chunk of channel iron, a piece of heavy galvanized sheet, and a bumper off an early VW bug, so we made that work. The hoops from the bumper became the runners, the plenum we made from the channel and tin and the flanges to bolt to the old manifold were whatever we could find that was thick enough. Amazingly enough it worked and George was happy. That old GT6 may still be running around Guam, but somehow I doubt it still has the Holley. That's a good DPO story for you. Probably about as insane as it gets.

Then during a short stint in university just before meeting my first wife and wrecking my life, having punched a hole in the oil pan of my first car (1970 Cutlass Supreme) I felt I needed another vehicle and was once again exposed to British vehicles and came fairly close to buying a Bugeye Sprite. But it was a tight fit on me, nothing in the dashboard worked (seller claimed that was normal and I'm sort of inclined to agree) and I just couldn't see the weak heater and sliding windows being all that good for the climate so I bought a ragtop FJ40 Land Cruiser instead. With a worn out and badly installed 283. Yet another story there.

Such was my experience with British vehicles by that point that at my next exposure, well I thought I was an old hand as there simply wasn't even enough there to be very complicated. And thus was the Mark lured into a false sense of complacency. At the time I was working as a whitewater rafting guide on the New and Gauley rivers and if you've ever known any river guides you probably think they are rather full of themselves. That's fair. Really they pretty much are. Surviving life threatening situations on a somewhat regular basis will sort of do that to you, and of course the female attention puts it's own spin on things as well so it's quite the wonder that any of them ever turn out normal. Maybe a few do.

Anyway I needed a cheap car. (What with river guides normally living at the subsistence level or less) and Dan's friend Steve knew a guy named Randall who was selling one for $500. It was a 1971 MGB convertible and Steve, who was six ft four was adamant that there was plenty of head and leg room and the top was kinda maybe good at least for summer, so we went to see Randall and after socializing and suitably lubed with a few shots of frozen Ouzo which was a new and unique experience, Dan and I took it for a spin, after which I became a brand new British car owner.

Oh my. This was not a mistake, it was more on the order of a natural disaster. I'm not sure just what the going rate is for this sort of experience and I do expect it could be dear but I believe I may have overtipped a bit. Or maybe a lot. That car... My oh my. That car. Must I tell all? I feel like maybe I shouldn't. There was just so much! This really wasn't a car so much as it was a raggedly rolling assortment of rust bound up in togetherness by a will to scatter itself over the entire landscape from horizon to horizon. British cars are infamous for their ability to find new and quaint ways to come apart or create opportunities for their owners to learn new languages but this one was in a class of it's own. I defy you to name even one way in which an MGB can or has gone wrong without this car being one of the gang. I think it invented formerly unheard of methods in fact. I was on the hop constantly, and I even had to get another car just so I could make parts runs. Is this the way it's supposed to work? Somehow I think not. Right off the bat the clutch quit working. Well, it worked well enough. Too good in fact. It insisted on working even when it wasn't supposed to. That was a new one. Nothing could be done. Master and slave were fine (after being rebuilt and bled of course) but sorry, no workie. So the transmission had to come out. Uh... the transmission does come out doesn't it? Of course after that was sorted the pressure plate that worked just fine was found to be defective, who would have expected that one? The weird throwout bearing being mostly not even there was odd but not surprising, but the pressure plate too? It was working just fine! Nope, there goes more money I don't have.

Every now and then though I got to drive it. And the thing was, despite the looming threat of imminent spontaneous disassembly it was FUN! Note that's capitalized. I should bold it as well. What a quagmire, surely there's a way out of such a dilemma? Well there was and eventually I got there by buying a different car (also a 1971 rag top MGB which just shows you what sort of a fool I am) and going on a sort of quest but that's yet another story. The cheap British sports car, by now no longer being exactly cheap but at least arguably still a sports car was sporting some fresh sheet metal in places, new synchros, a bunch of front end parts, a constant supply of oil for the shocks which, did you know the rear shocks will actually function low on oil? Not like the front ones that way. Even the engine got refreshed though of course it then shed the business end of the flywheel bolts unexpectedly. Even some Moss competition front springs and other assorted parts. The car was starting to resemble something actually driveable just about by the time it ejected one of the back wheels while Dan was driving it. Of course electrically it was a case of "Here we go Again!" so the alternator promptly burned the plugs to an unrecognizable mass of black char and ditto for the headlight switch and headlight connectors, to say nothing at all of the wiring harness itself which in places had transformed itself into a melted mass of misery. By then I was leaning towards a paucity of patience and with zero funds for yet more repairs I had to find a way. Separate rocker switches from the local supply replaced the headlight switch at a bare fraction of the cost and gave me independent control of the headlights and running lights in the bargain, important for those late night departures from the local constabulary around a few dark turns which it seemed was one thing it could do rather well. The alternator though was a bit of a challenge. Apparently it was still capable of working, if it only had the proper wires connected and one of those wires had a resistance built in. I don't recall the details and at the moment don't have the book at hand but what I remember is that I had no suitable resistors. What I did have were some light bulbs... well, light bulbs are resistors aren't they? It turned out that a 60 watt household light bulb was just about the right resistance and clearly it would handle the necessary amount of current. So how can you make use of that? It didn't make a lot of sense to break the bulb and try to use the element, those are kinda delicate but hey! Here's a fully enclosed small bakelite box with a bulb socket left over from a bit of mobile home remodeling, why wouldn't that work? Best of all, the bulb (or resistor I guess I should say) is easily changed in case 40 watts is more suitable for instance. So that got mounted on the inner fender and wired in. The alternator now worked fine but it did get a few curious looks during inspection at the next autocross. I suppose it's no wonder they kept kicking us out, especially since on old hard bias ply tires I insisted on beating the local hot shoe, notably by an absolutely HUGE margin... Yeah they didn't let me get in my last run that time either. Apparently my cheap bargain basement one piece air filters they used to sell for MGs were illegal. Who knew? The original housings were just one more thing the car had managed to jettison who knew where.  I somehow doubt those were any less restrictive. The advantage was in driving, not power. I took advantage of the car's trailing throttle oversteer in the hairpin when everybody else was slowing down for it. I believe they sort of considered that dangerous in retrospect. But I say if you ain't knocking over cones what's the problem? Wasn't the object to get the best time? How was I supposed to know I'd be 10 seconds faster on a one minute course? Well, I suppose that could be considered sorta embarrassing. I can admit it, I would not like to be so thoroughly showed up either. Especially with a car that ragged.

I mean to say, it didn't look good. A 20 footer? No. How about a 200 footer? Nope, not that either, best to keep it out of sight entirely.

I'm not saying I hated the car though, it was sort of endearing in it's own special way. Surely nothing could be better for creating adventures of all sorts. In fact every drive tended towards Adventure. Even when I abandoned it completely for it's sister and took the large tour of the country it was waiting there dutifully when I returned better than a year later and even was on at least one occasion useful... I think. Of course that was the night the F150 4x4 attempted to go over the top lengthwise and that was the end of the OPS's dubious career.

And if you wondered what OPS stood for? Well, the car was Orange.

Jim

[hamondale]

Jim that is a great true tall tale.  You should get the BV8 equivalent of a Putilzer Prize.  Whatever that might be.

[BlownMGB-V8]

Thanks John, I consider that a big complement coming from you.

But let me assure you, so far as I know every word is the God's Honest Truth. Those were actual events. Of course I can't swear to the guy with the Spit as I wasn't there but I've never seen anybody so wild eyed and wired in my entire life and his religion forbid drugs so I'm inclined to believe it too.

Jim